A system of investor protection rests on a theory of which investors need protection. This chapter surveys the composition and perception of individual investors in American capital markets from 1900 to the present. The retail investor base has expanded remarkably during that time. Beyond the...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that identifies financial literacy concepts that board members in NFP’s should read, understand and apply their minds to effectively perform their duties.Design: We address this through qualitative and quantitative methods with group...

Using a novel database that combines mortgage servicing records, credit-bureau data, and loan application information, we show that lower-income and minority borrowers have significantly higher nonpayment rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, even after controlling for conventional risk factors....

Mobile payments (m-payments) increase the accessibility of large segments of society to financial services while before the traditional banking system excluded these for lack of proof of identity and because of unsafe environments. This constitutes a key driver of new growth strategies of the...

I provide evidence that adverse shocks to the wealth of business owners during the Financial Crisis had large effects on their firms' financing, employment, and investment. I use individual-level portfolio data from Norway to exploit the dispersion in stock returns during 2008–09 as a source...

This paper analyzes the effect of mass-shootings on peer-to-peer lending behavior. Using US data from 2014-2018, we implement both an event study and a difference-in-differences methodology to exploit the quasi-experimental nature of mass-shooting incidents on local credit markets. Our findings...

This paper examines the effect of broadband Internet on household stock market participation. By exploiting the expansion of broadband in the U.S. from 1999 to 2008, we find that the availability of broadband in a household’s zip code significantly increases the likelihood of stockholding and...

We survey clients of a German online bank to study retail investors' beliefs about the autocorrelation of annual returns of the aggregate stock market, and the role of these beliefs in financial decisions. A majority of our respondents believe in mean reversion of aggregate returns, and these...

We study the role of captive finance in the car loan market when manufacturers' liquidity demand increases. Using a new multi-country dataset on securitized car loans, we show that captive lending enables a liquidity constrained integrated manufacturer to increase the cash collected from car...

We propose debt-wealth constraints to separate all households into constrained and unconstrained groups. A constrained household is subject to debt payment dues with limited wealth. However, an unconstrained family has cash reserves. Since cash reserves can absorb investment losses, only...